Premier’s Innovation Award Kicks Off Successful Year For Sentinelle Medical Inc.

Making MRI an even stronger tool in the fight against cancer

Cameron Piron
President and Co-founder
Sentinelle Medical Inc.

Cameron Piron knew at an early age that whatever road he chose to follow, he wanted to combine his three great passions: business, medicine and technology.

And today, at the ripe old age of 34, Cameron has done just that. Over the past 10 years, Cameron has created and nurtured one of Ontario’s fastest growing medical device businesses. His company, Sentinelle Medical Inc., is taking the medical imaging world by storm with technology that is making magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) an even stronger tool in the fight against cancer. Sentinelle is changing our approach to breast healthcare in North America and establishing Ontario as a key location for diagnostic imaging research and development.

Sentinelle’s Vanguard® System is a major tool for lab technicians and physicians to quickly and accurately diagnose breast cancer. Sentinelle’s technology means shorter testing time, reduced costs, better images and 3-D visualization software for reading MR images. The integrated system allows patients to be scanned, have the cancer detected and have a physician perform a biopsy all in one visit. 

Sentinelle’s technology has really taken off in the last two years. But like most overnight successes, it was years in the making.

Cameron originally studied systems design engineering at the University of Waterloo followed by graduate work at the University of Toronto where he did a master’s thesis in medical biophysics on breast imaging.

Still in his 20s, Cameron continued to perfect his breast imaging system while working at Toronto’s Sunnybrook Hospital. In 2005, he made his move with the launch of Sentinelle Medical with three partners. The next three years were devoted to landing that one big client - General Electric Co. – that would launch his products worldwide.

Sentinelle’s system needed to work in conjunction with existing MRI equipment, most of which was produced by three manufacturers – General Electric, Toshiba and Siemens. Each company's units were slightly different, so his technology would have to be customized for each.

Cameron decided to start with MRI leader GE, and failure simply wasn’t an option. He had invested heavily to adapt his technology to GE equipment, and if he couldn’t land them as a client, he’d have to start all over developing technology to work with other systems.

After many often-frustrating attempts to attract the MRI giant, in 2008 Sentinelle and GE signed a North American distribution deal and the orders began to flow. The GE deal validated Sentinelle’s technology and soon after, Toshiba and Siemens came onboard.

In fact, 2008 was a pivotal year for Cameron personally, and for Sentinelle.

That year Cameron received the Premier’s Catalyst Award for Best Young Innovator. It was the first of many awards, including being named R&D Magazine’s Innovator of the Year – the first Canadian ever to win. “Winning the Premier’s Award really was a catalyst for us. Up to that point, we were quietly and purposely under the radar, putting our money and energy to new technology development,” he says.
And the company began to grow.

From a staff of 25 in June 2007, Sentinelle ballooned to more than 140 today and is continuing to expand every month. To accommodate Sentinelle’s growing customers, the company recently moved into a 30,000-sq.-ft. facility in downtown Toronto. Sentinelle's imaging equipment, which cost about $200,000 each, is now installed in about 200 health care sites in North America. The next step is to take Sentinelle’s products world wide.

Sentinelle’s success is, in large part, due to “hiring the right people,” Cameron says. “Winning awards like Innovator of the Year has helped us recruit top staff. We are now bringing in scientists and researchers from Ontario and around the world. The talent pool coming out of Ontario universities is extraordinary. We are always training, mentoring and nurturing new talent.”

And throughout all the success, Cameron holds a soft spot for his alma mater, Waterloo “We’re number one in placing co-op students from UW,” he says proudly. “They will be the leaders of tomorrow.”

Cameron is confident that Sentinelle will continue to grow in Ontario. “The more we can show people there is a viable, rewarding career in medical device development in Ontario, the better. Our company wouldn’t be here unless it was a great place to do business. The Ontario government has been very nurturing. They were ahead of the curve even before the financial crisis hit. I haven’t seen any other jurisdiction that has put that kind support into place. Others are starting, but Ontario has a huge head start.”

Joanne Muldoonh
Application Specialist
Sentinelle Medical Inc.

Joanne Muldoon is one of the “cool kids.”

“Everybody wants a Sentinelle coil,” says the young applications specialist with one of Ontario’s most successful medical device manufacturers. “When I travel around North America, we’re considered the cool kids because our technology is used by customers like the Mayo Clinic, Yale University, many large research centres and big name radiologists. The word is spreading fast.”

And the word is that Sentinelle technology is improving the performance of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) breast cancer detection. Sentinelle’s growing influence is helping establish Ontario as a key location for diagnostic imaging research and development. Sentinelle Medical Inc. has developed a technique to improve MRI detection of breast cancer, resulting in shorter testing time, reduced costs, better images and 3-D visualization software for reading MR images.

Joanne is one of Sentinelle’s original staffers – she’s “Number 16”, hired in January 2007, at a company that these days is doubling in size every six months. “Every Monday morning there are new faces,” she says. Just about every Sentinelle employee can tell you his or her hiring number. In a little over two years, Sentinelle has grown to 140 high tech positions.

Joanne is responsible for training Sentinelle’s growing list of customers – radiologists and technologists at top diagnostic and research institutions – on the proper techniques for performing breast MRI, biopsies and interpreting the captured images using Sentinelle’s software program. It’s a job that takes her to every corner of North America these days, and although she hasn’t been assigned just yet, Joanne is anticipating a good deal of world travel as Sentinelle products increasingly come into use around the world.

Toronto is a long way from her home in Sudbury, but she readily admits it’s a job she loves. “I love being part of the innovation and how everyone is so passionate about improving the technology and improving health care. It’s an exciting and dynamic place to work.”

She’s equally enthused about working with the growing slate of customers. “I am proud to tell our (US) customers that we’re a Canadian company. We’re getting to be known and accepted throughout the industry, and now, when they hear Canada, they immediately think of Sentinelle.

“That recognition makes my job a lot easier. When your customers are really happy and excited about the product they just purchased, it makes you feel good about what we do. It’s a great product and we’re really a smart company and more and more people look to us as the experts.”

Christopher Jerger
Production Manager
Sentinelle Medical Inc.

Even though Christopher Jerger’s job at Sentinelle Medical keeps him pretty well tied to the production room floor, he never loses sight of the patient who will benefit from the technology he helps to produce.

It’s a personal matter with Christopher. He’s had his own frightening brush with cancer, and he’s seen the effects of cancer in his own family and that of his young wife’s.

“We place an enormous emphasis on the patient. You can’t lose sight of that. When we do our testing, we are incredibly picky about what we send to our customers. We have to make sure it is as good as it can possibly be, because our technology is used to detect cancer in a patient and we don’t want to have any mistakes. If something goes wrong, it’s the patient who gets hurt and we don’t want that.”

Sentinelle’s technology improves the performance of MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) breast cancer detection. Sentinelle has developed a technique to improve MRI detection of breast cancer, resulting in shorter testing time, reduced costs, better images and 3-D visualization software for reading MR images.

Christopher is a relative newbie to the Toronto-based medical device manufacturer. He’s Number 83 in a company that has grown to 140 in just the last few months. And he’s a newbie to Canada too. He came to Toronto from his native Syracuse, New York, with his American wife who had just landed an assistant professorship at the University of Toronto. Finding Sentinelle was a perfect fit.

“I started off in manufacturing engineering, and now I have two jobs, the other with a focus on product quality. It’s a lot of fun working here, a very energetic, fast-paced environment. Our emphasis is on getting our product out, to be the first to the market with our technology, with the very best product we can produce. We want to drive the market so fast, to move as fast as we possibly can, but we know that we need to balance that speed with producing quality products.”

That attention to quality is helping establish Sentinelle as “the very best product on the market. That’s important, but it’s a reputation we have to maintain on each and every item we sell. Already we’re being touted as better than our competitors.”

Christopher intends to keep it that way.